Estimation of Dynamic Properties for the Validation of Driven Railway Vehicle Models

Validated and reliable models are becoming increasingly important for vehicle development. In order to ensure a sufficient model quality, the models are validated based on on-track tests. Here, the European Standard EN14363 proposes a method for validation considering the vehicle/track interaction. A high influence on the vehicle/track interaction is caused by varying or unknown operating conditions (e.g. friction conditions, condition of the rail profiles, superstructure condition), which are dominated at the time of the measurement. These influences make the estimation of vehicle parameters difficult. In this paper, an approach to estimate the dynamic parameters of railway vehicle models by means of the so called shaker test is presented. The shaker test is a pragmatic and cost-efficient way to determine the dynamic properties of a driven railway vehicle independently of the vehicle/track interaction. The vehicle is equipped with acceleration sensors and a frequency dependent excitation is applied via the drive train. A methodology is shown to determine the model parameters with regard to the linear system component by using numerical optimisations in order to achieve an improvement of the model quality.